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The New Oceania
The New Oceania is a relatively new nation, established on April 30th, 2016. The old Oceania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four) was a totalitarian dictatorship filled with propaganda, mass surveillance and very few civil and political rights. False tales of a revolutionary brotherhood led to the foundation of an actual Brotherhood, led by codename Commander Red. After months of civil war, the Party was defeated, forced from the Ministry of Control, their old constitution shredded and a new one written on the reassembled scraps of the old. The nation has strong civil and political rights, but has a weak - but quickly growing - economy. The country is very strongly left wing, radicalized by over half a century of totalitarian fascism. Under Commander Red, The New Oceania is acting extremely aggressive towards other countries for not helping them destroy the previous regime - Especially fascist, totalitarian and capitalist nations. History: The Old Oceania It's important to note that Oceania specialized in document forging and historical manipulation. Any information which was found anything more than extremely unlikely to be forgeries has been excluded. "WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH." -Common Party slogan. Oceania was a gigantic military and economic superpower which arose during the 1950s. Previously a group of several large European nations, they united under one banner with a new party, the two most notable members of whom were (most likely) "Big Brother" and Emmanuel Goldstein. As the new nation developed, a rift grew between Goldstein and Big Brother - The former desired a democratic country, while the latter wanted a totalitarian dictatorship with him at the head. Party members were quick to take sides, and in the end Goldstein and his supporters were forced to evacuate the country and/or go underground. Big Brother had his dictatorship and Oceania's reign began. Oceania operated on the principles of "INGSOC", a short form for English Socialism. Despite the name, the ideology was quite unlike traditional socialism. Few people even understood what it actually meant; it was simply used as a label for all that was good and just in Oceania. Ministries Oceania's exact history is nigh impossible to know for sure, but primary sources written by people outside the country give the most credible evidence which exists. Oceania's duties were primarily split among five different ministries, four of which located in its capital of New London: * The Ministry of Truth was responsible for the modification of historical documents, fabrication of propaganda, bureaucratic record storage and managing surveillance. * The Ministry of Plenty was responsible for storage of goods, and rationing them out to the public in increasingly small amounts and of lower quality, whilst propaganda from Minitruth claimed the quantities had risen and were made from the finest ingredients taken from conquered nations. (In reality, such goods would have only been saved for the elite.) * The Ministry of Peace was responsible for managing military technology, strategy, training, etc... Minipeace made great strides in military technology, creating weapons decades ago which other countries are only recently being able to produce themselves. Arguably the most powerful was the 4891 Floating Fortress, enormous battleships with countless weapons and powerful enough engines to travel as fast as normal-sized battleships. * The Ministry of Love was responsible for torture and execution at the hands of the Not-so-Secret Police, the Thought Police. People were not killed but rather "Unpersoned"; taken during the night to the Ministry, while the Ministry of Truth destroyed or edited all documents which would offer any proof that person ever existed. * The Ministry of Control was responsible for the governance of the other ministries and Oceanian society in general - A secret ministry not located in New London. The equivalent of a house of parliament, but in no way democratic. Nobody outside the Inner Party even knew where it was. Social Castes Oceanian society was very strictly divided between three groups. * The Proles, composing 85% of the population, were the poor, doing no work for the government but receiving nothing from them in turn. They had the least amount of Party surveillance around them, since it was common knowledge that while the proles were free, they were too damned stupid to ever care for political overhaul. * The Outer Party, composing 14% of the population, would be considered the middle class. They carried out the grunt labor of the party - Moving boxes, modifying documents, working as Thought Police and other work in or on behalf of the ministries. Their pay came in the form of increasingly small amounts of Party aid. While they could in theory do black market business with the Proles, Party members who engaged in such activity were viewed with suspicion, and if one is viewed with suspicion in Oceania, they are unpersoned. Due to the Inner party's belief of how a revolution is carried out - The middle class using promises of equality to get the lower class to join them in overthrowing the upper - The Outer Party suffered the most surveillance. * The Inner Party, composing the top 1% of society, were the politicians, businessman, high-ranking military/Thought Police officers and capitalists. They macromanaged Party affairs and profited off the blood, sweat and tears of the Outer Party. * At the very top of the hierarchy was Big Brother. Big Brother was, supposedly, the reason for all order and stability in society. His face was the symbol of prosperity and all that is good and just. A "benevolent" dictator whose word was law, Big Brother was a middle aged man when taking power, and it seems impossible that he was still ruler or even alive near the end of Oceania. Some Outer Party members believed he'd been replaced by another Inner Party member taking on his name, or that Big Brother never existed at all and Oceania was controlled at the top by a single council. Nonetheless, having a single figure for people to connect their love of the Party to was a useful tool. Wars During its time in power, Oceania brokered various alliances and wars with world powers, primarily Eurasian and Eastasian countries. While some believe Oceania initiated these wars for resources, others claim the true aim of Oceania's unceasing wartime was purely psychological. Oceania wanted to keep itself in a constant wartime economy, justifying complete control of society. Oceania even occasionally secretly bombed itself to build hatred for Oceania's enemies. Oceania was an extremely warlike country which constantly created and shattered alliances with the same few countries in its area and never told its populace the truth. The Populace of Oceania had believed that Oceania encompassed not only all of Western Europe, but all the Americas and Africa, while only two other nations existed - Eurasia, focused mostly on long, defensive, grinding wars of attrition, and Eastasia, which had a tendency towards aggressive blitzkrieg-style battles. In reality, neither of these ever existed. Oceania always claimed to be allied with one against the other, but constantly changed sides and the populace legitimately believed they had ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia Eastasia. The populace never questioned the propaganda, believing they had simply misheard/read the propaganda last time. In reality, Oceania was constantly the aggressor against numerous countries in its area, and was never once directly invaded on its base homeland. The World Assembly was petitioned several times to do something about Oceania, but due to not seeking a global war against the military superpower, they never did anything about it. Life in Oceania The most notable aspect of Oceanian society, besides being littered with red posters reading "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU", were the omnipresent telescreens. Televisions which could be turned down in volume but never turned off, they both spouted propaganda 24/7 and watched people with cameras. Every Party home had to have one in each room. While Inner Party members' telescreens technically had an off switch, having it off too long was seen as suspicious. Not even Inner Party members were immune to the Thought Police. Unusual for such a large, fascist nation of its time, Oceania did not create an enemy of any ethnic or religious groups within itself. (Easy to say when religion itself was banned.) Rather, the targets of propaganda were Thoughtcriminals, - Anyone who thought negatively of the Party - Whichever country Oceania claimed to be at war with, and the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood The Brotherhood was a fictional rebel group made up by the Party as a way to generate fear and create a common enemy. Led by Emmanuel Goldstein, the Brotherhood sought to destroy all of Oceanian society based on their sense of radical communism, and enlisted other members through passing along "The Book". It's unknown whether or not "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein" was actually written by Goldstein, or just a fabrication made by the Party. Either way, the Party had several Thought Police members pretend to be Brotherhood recruiters, asking suspected Thoughtcriminals if they'd be interested. If they were, "The Book" would be given to them to take home and read, and while at home the Thought Police would abduct and unperson the Thoughtcriminal. The national language was "Newspeak", but it was not believed that it would actually become the most common language until 2050. Newspeak was based on a simplified form of English, which included no words for such concepts as freedom, democracy, equality, etc... If people knew no words for these ideas, how could they think of them? And even if they could be thought of, how could one describe them to others and rally a revolt? Oceania itself was a generally dirty country. While economically powerful, the Inner Party had better things to do with its resources than public maintenance. If people believed Oceania was getting stronger, who cared what the country looked like? Oceania reached its peak of tyranny in the mid 00s. After that is when the 'actual '''Brotherhood started. Rise of the Brotherhood Commander Red "Attempts to create a true Brotherhood had come when eyes were opened, and were gone when heads were shot. The first and last man to create a successful Brotherhood shall go down in Oceanian history as the one who liberated us all!" -The New Oceanian Minister of Culture. A man who goes by the name Commander Red was born on May 24th, 1984. Any record of his true name has been destroyed or hidden, and he refuses to disclose his legal name, stating that one must "believe in the ideal, not the idol." Most of Commander Red's history is known from his account of his life, as requested during an interview. It's believed to be true, as whichever Party documents have survived which had any relevance to his life support his story. ''I was born as an only child of a prolish family on the edge of New London, just a block away from the electric fence which surrounded the border of the city. Due to the minimal surveillance of proletown at the time, my father would sometimes take me out to the fence, and stare out past the border. While I didn't understand it as a child, my father harbored secret thoughts against the Party. Being a prole, he was relatively unaffected by the Party's totalitarianism, but cared much more about the physical barriers they had instituted. His ideals of freedom were more physical than political, and he cared deeply about the environment - something the Party ignored entirely. Beyond that fence was a beautiful, glowing meadow that only the proles saw, and only a fraction of them cared. Unfortunately, I didn't know much about my mother, partially because she didn't talk much about herself or her past. She was just your normal stay-at-home mother, ignorant as most of us proles were. But she did love me a lot and did everything she could to make sure I grew up safe and cared for. The so-called socialist government was anything but. Nothing was done for us. The proles didn't even have access to schools! My father was a black market merchant. He didn't deal with anything super shady at the time. A lot of his work was simply acquiring books that others didn't read. My father prized obscure knowledge, and always wanted me to read a lot to compensate for my lack of formal education. Looking at some countries, I'm almost happy I didn't have access to public education; schools are naught but propaganda and thought programming. True intelligence is wisdom, and true wisdom comes to you in the heat of battle, the wind in your face, fighting for what you believe in. I grew up on classic dystopian literature. Huxley showed me why the proles thought the way we did. Bradbury showed me how the Outer Party could so easily destroy the past. Golding showed me why the Inner Party created all this. And you know what?! Burgess showed me how to destroy it all! My father clearly wanted me to be a revolutionary. I'd learned to think against the Party, but neither of my parents lived long enough to teach me to act. Indeed, had they not died, the Party would still be in power. In 1999, I was out with my mother in an Outer Party area. My father always told us not to risk going in those places, but for some reason, my mother simply had to visit the area. While we were walking down the street, people started screaming and pointed to the sky as a rocket fell right down towards us. My mother pushed me out of the way, but wasn't able to save herself. She was close to the center of the blast, and had no chance of surviving. F*** was I devastated. But after several minutes of weeping, I noticed something. A remaining shard of the rocket in the rubble. Reports of the missile attacks across major Oceanian cities were being reported on telescreens everywhere. I picked up the shard and looked at it quickly. Despite their claims that the missiles were the result of a Eurasian strike, the shard I held had the distinctive INGSOC logo, not the Neo-Bolshevism that Eurasia went by. I stared up at the telescreen. Tears flowed down my cheeks. I was confused. I knew it was in a government's nature to establish control over its populace, but surely they wouldn't go to these lengths. I returned home to my father, but didn't find him there. Sure enough, he was in the second most likely place: staring out at the meadows beyond the electric fence. I was emotional. I don't remember the entire speech my dad gave me before he died. But I distinctly remembering him telling me to never underestimate the lengths a government will go to in order to keep power. ''(At this point in the interview, Commander Red began to tear up.) ''To never underestimate the lives they would sacrifice as fuel for their regime. And most importantly, to never underestimate the power that the perfect combination of hate and love could have to change the world for the better. And with that, my father claimed the final right he felt he had left - the right to die. My father ran towards the fence as I screamed no, and he grabbed it. He screamed out in pain as he held onto it, but he clearly wasn't done. Through sheer force of will, he lashed one of his arms up to grab higher on the fence. The same with the other. He jumped up with his legs. He made it to the top. My father died at the top, and as the most powerful symbol of defiance I've ever seen, fell to his death on the other side of the fence. He had his meadows. He had his peace, and I knew I had to fight so others could to. I walked slowly and silently through town, my head down, holding the missile shard in my hand. I returned to the area my mother had died in just earlier that day, to find the street completely repaired and all evidence of the strike gone. All evidence but for the single shard I held in my hand. That chunk of metal was small, but it was evidence. It was the embodiment of the Party's evil to me. I stared up at the telescreen at the top of the streetlamp, still spewing lies about the attack. In that moment, I was reborn, transformed! I yelled out "NO MORE!" as I threw the missile fragment at the telescreen. The glass shattered, and the fragment fell back down to me. I caught it, watching the glass and sparks fall to the ground. I looked around at the people staring at me in awe. Undoubtedly, the Thought Police searched their database that night to try to track me down. But I was a prole, I was free, and I knew it! What I didn't know, however, was how to make a change with my freedom. I had no weapons save my mind, my voice and a chunk of metal. Returning home to organize donations of certain items through his will, I found something incredible: a motherlode of weapons in our basement! My dad spent so much time working so that he could acquire all of these. A lot of it was just low-grade handguns and poor bullets, but a lot of it was serious. Executive Thinkpol weapons, top of the line! Experimental exotic weapons and explosives from the Ministry of Peace! Reverse engineered technology from other countries! My father did not say that love alone could make the world better. He mentioned hate too. Why? Because some people won't listen to the wishes of hearts or words of the voice. Some will only listen to the bullets of guns. No matter what measures had to be taken, the voice of freedom would no longer be contained. It was the time to howl. Establishment The earliest acts of consistent individual anti-Party vandalism carried out in the name of the Brotherhood were done by Commander Red. While he had many weapons, Red felt he had a special skill that others did not. Anyone could shoot guns or blow up bombs, but only he had access to books. The symbol of the Brotherhood became the Blood Wolf, and Red would spray it onto buildings alongside quotes from classic literature showing the Party wrong. These acts of vandalism would be on local telescreens, but quickly erased and people would forget and even deny it ever happened. This angered Red. He decided that occasionally he'd have to take to violence. Occasionally, Red would plant dynamite in a Party building and blow the place up. While the media would quickly cover it as an attack from Eastasia Eurasia, Red knew that if this happened enough, SOMEONE would be awakened. After a month and a half of Party destruction, Red encountered someone who seemed to think differently from the rest of Oceania. This man was a prole, but didn't identify himself as one. His philosophy was that such ideas as the proles, Outer Party and Inner Party were simply concepts used to divide Oceania into weakness, instead of uniting into something greater. A bit too nationalistic for Red, but he at least had an idea: Everyone together as equals. You know, I never learned that man's real name. I met him in a coffee shop on some Tuesday evening. He was not a stupid man by any means, but propaganda seems to simply have had too great a toll on him. Nationalism is the political equivalent of narcissism, and just as hard to break. I had to do it. For people like him, I had to find a way. On April 4th, 2000, Commander Red committed his first weaponized act against the Party. Commander Red shot a Thinkpol agent in the chest while she was on patrol. Backup was called, and Red killed all 14 of them while sustaining minimal injuries to himself. Word undoubtedly passed quickly to higher command, so Red acted while he could. He ran to the town square, the one place where proles, outer and inner Party members would all be present. He climbed the bronze statue of Big Brother in the square and gave a speech. He denounced the Party and the way it treated its people, encouraged his ideals of power to the people, and paraphrased the banned book "The Communist Manifesto" to try to encourage anyone to join him. Before he was done his speech, however, a rocket flew from the sky towards him. He leapt from the statue as the rocket struck it. The statue crumbled and Red fell to the ground. He could hear the sirens of more Thought Police approaching and knew he had to make his escape. Red managed to hide in an alleyway and avoid being found. However, almost everyone who had firsthand witnessed his speech would be unpersoned over the next few days - almost. I have no idea how he found me. Even the Thought Police couldn't track me. But that man found my house and told me he wanted to join my cause. I asked his name. He told me that his name was irrelevant, and that a person does not matter but rather the ideas that they stand for. It was something about him I always admired. Either way, he gave himself the codename Castro. He did not ask me for my codename, not my legitimate one. The more he knew, the more he could give away if captured. I made up Commander Red on the spot, to be honest. Yet, it had a certain ring to it, so I kept it. Castro and I had so many good times together. We'd meet every night and wreck havoc in Inner Party areas. Set fires to houses, knocked out Party members in the street with crowbars, fired Prototype Hand Railguns at random stuff - I wish it was always as fun as it was at the beginning. Our acts got a ton of telescreen coverage, but we never did. We'd laugh and share a black market beer as we sat on the curb in proletown and watched it. Sure, the telescreens can watch you just as you watch it, but they never actually checked the ones in Proletown. The Party assumed that all the proles were too stupid to do anything. Instead, regulations and surveillance of the Outer Party just went up. They could never imagine a revolution that wasn't started by the middle class enlisting the low to help them. We were different - We were a couple of idiots with some books and some guns, proles. If everything collapsed, it'd be the low destroying the high, the middle joining in if they felt like it, and the abolishment of all class. We never expected to win though. We lived knowing that any night now the Party could smarten up and find us, have us killed. Yet, death was no longer a fear for us. We'd caused anarchy. We made a difference. I was sure that if a million people watched a telescreen, 999,999 of them would stare in horror, but there had to be someone in there who laughed inside like us, or felt like doing it themselves, or had their eyes opened. I don't know if he ever thought about that too, but I certainly did. You know what? We did get someone else one day! Codename Tyler witnessed us walking through proletown one night with a bunch of weapons and asked if he could join. He was bored with life and thought whatever we were doing would be exciting. Two nights later, two people saw us and thought we were Brotherhood members. That's when it hit us: We were the Brotherhood! Nobody knew if the Brotherhood actually existed or if it was just a propaganda tool. Either way, we'd either become the true Brotherhood, or we'd consider ourselves an independent branch. We declared ourselves the Brotherhood, and then proceeded to go and blow up a warehouse full of sugars and salts for the Inner Party. On one hand, that didn't seem like it was super significant. On the other hand, whenever I saw an Inner Party member with coffee after that time, I got a chuckle out of watching them try to choke it down. Not everything we did was mindless destruction. Sometimes when we thought it was too much of a risk to go out and spray-paint Ray Bradbury quotes on buildings, we'd stay in and read. My father always said that books would save the world, and I completely agree. As we got more members and numbers of Thinkpol officers increased, we'd be staying inside increasingly often, reading. Some of the people we attracted hadn't even held a book in their hands before, but we managed to help them at least get the basic concepts: Society was built to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. Books being banned is bad. The outer party deserves better, and the proles even moreso. So, when did everything stop being fun? Well, things started getting dark when some of our members were never seen again. The Party obviously got to them, and we were thinking to ourselves that it was our fault. We caused the raise in security, and now some of our Outer Party friends had been erased from existence. Yet, at the same time, it empowered us. Being unpersoned wasn't merely execution, it was being erased from existence. The Ministry of Truth has documents destroyed or edited to erase that person from history itself. The most bizarre part is how everyone would just seem to forget they ever existed either. We all knew this was our duty: to remember. If the memory of someone still exists, they do as well. We won't let them die until we do as well, for the Brotherhood must live and die as one. We understood this, and were not discouraged by the death of our party comrades. When Tyler disappeared? That was scary. Tyler was a prole. The fact the Thought Police got to him meant the Party was starting to get serious and was willing to crack down on the proles to find us. They'd never done this before. If the Party was treating this seriously, we had to as well. No more laughing while we set fires. It was to be a battle cry from here on. We're not silly anarchists anymore. We're revolutionaries. Major Vandalism Major reports of destruction began to appear around this point. Party documents outlined major fires in rich Inner Party neighborhoods, and even the redirection of some of their budget to repair a destroyed branch of the Ministry of Truth. We had about 70 members in 2004. We'd get new members at about the same rate as others vanished from existence. It was usually the newer ones who hadn't yet found a way to secure themselves and live in proletown. Outer Party members didn't usually last long, unless they were able to run away and cut themselves off. Those are brave men and women, and they're usually very committed to the cause. Anyhow, it was in 2004 that I destroyed the Minitruth Storage House. They kept their records of unpersons in a separate building, and I just had the urge to destroy it, to prove that these people did once exist. Admittedly, it was pretty stupid that I went at it alone with just a few of the experimental weapons from my dad's basement. Nonetheless, I succeeded. They had minimal security, probably because they assumed nobody would ever find it. Blowing up that place was easy, and I took a wad of sheets with me home. At night, when I was worried or losing hope, I'd read through those documents, those endless names that everyone denies ever existed. They were all from the mid-1980s. These people vanished as I came into being. I almost felt like a reincarnation of the angry and forgotten. The name at the top of the first page was Winston Smith. I never knew this man, but that name was always what I thought of when I thought of unpersons. All these people I would never know, for their histories have been erased. What were they like? it's for them that I had to keep going. Category:Nations